Category: Columns

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Coping with COVID: Houghton MANRRS, “Adapting and Thriving”

Article written by Ryan Ozzello (’21), treasurer of Houghton MANRRS

Whether we like it or not, most of what happens to us in our lives is not of our choosing. Good or bad, we find ourselves having to adapt to our new situations if we want to continue to grow. Like a plant uprooted and replanted in different soil, if we don’t learn our new situation, we will miss the beautiful rose buds and delicious red apples of our lives for others and ourselves to enjoy.

Our MANRRS chapter at Houghton College has sought to adapt right alongside its students this semester so that it can continue to provide them with tangible professional development opportunities, as well as excellent internship and career prospects.

For those of you who may not be familiar with MANRRS, it is a national organization with a mission to promote academic and professional advancement by empowering minorities in agriculture, natural resources and related sciences. Practically, this looks like equipping individuals from minority groups with professional skills and opportunities in the expansive agriculture industry through webinars, conferences, workshops, competitions, and career fairs. 

In light of in-person restrictions this semester, the chapter here at Houghton is leveraging Houghton’s beautiful and expansive outdoor space to help students connect with each other and with the club. Additionally, they are making the best use of the virtual world by attending various online MANRRS webinars, conferences, and career fairs. Now more than ever, students on campus have the greatest access to MANRRS resources.

To kick things off this semester, Houghton MANRRS hosted a scavenger hunt at the Field of Dreams where students not only had a great time, but also learned more about the professional and agricultural world. While racing to complete all of the secret location challenges and solve the final riddle, students learned more about Houghton’s solar array, technology in the agriculture industry, and even how to foster better team meetings in class or in the workplace.

Mary Vandenbosch, President of Houghton MANRRS, says that “the scavenger hunt was a great opportunity to showcase how Houghton MANRRS is fun and dedicated to educating students about important topics.”

Alongside being adept at creating fun and educational opportunities for students, the organizers of Houghton MANRRS are also very knowledgeable and skilled in practices such as public speaking, leadership, and career development. This past weekend during the MANRRS Regional Conference, Mary Vandenbosch took first place in the Region 1 Impromptu Public Speaking Contest, qualifying her to compete at the 2021 national conference scheduled for April in Atlanta, Georgia. Held virtually this semester, students were able to compete in areas such as public speaking and interviewing, and participate in workshops focused on topics such as leadership, career development, diversity, and inclusion.

Ryan Ozzello, past president and current treasurer of Houghton MANRRS, attended three workshops focused on diversity and inclusion where he was able to actively engage with experienced panelists on topics about identity, social justice, how to navigate the workplace from a BIPOC lens, and better understand imposter syndrome. Speaking about his experience he said, “I can confidently say that I have grown in my understanding of current issues and my role in supporting a more just society with regard to race and identity.”

Our MANRRS chapter has adapted and is prepared to continue thriving this year. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss active participation, including professional development opportunities on campus and the national conference in the spring. Please contact us at houghton.manrrs@gmail.com or join us at our general chapter meeting, Thursday, October 8th at 7pm in the Java Conference room. We will be discussing upcoming events and community service opportunities.

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Ever Wonder… The Story Behind Houghton’s Boulder?

Lost in the clouded annals of history is the story of the Houghton Boulder. 

As people on campus will recall, The Boulder is the name of the currently defunct college yearbook. What many people do not know is that the name of The Boulder was inspired by a real & historical boulder located on campus.

For many new incoming students, the answer seems clear as to which boulder this is. The boulder by the Gillette Dorm of course! It’s the most iconic rock on campus. But this is not the case. The Gillette Boulder has only been on campus since the spring of 2008 and was donated by the outgoing class of that year. Furthermore, when the Gillette Boulder was initially installed on campus it was met with a wide amount of criticism.

Marc Smithers (‘08), the Dean of Students, was a part of the class that donated the Gillette boulder. He explained, “The class of 2009, which my wife graduated in, had a strong push within their class to have their class gift be the removal of the rock as they saw it as an eyesore. But, hey, people thought the Eiffel Tower was an eyesore when it was first installed.” 

Returning to the initial question, it turns out that there is another rock on campus which inspired the name for the yearbook. Located in front of Fancher Hall and emblazoned with a bronze plaque is the grave of Copperhead, “The last one of the Seneca tribe of Indians,” as the plaque reads. This is Copperhead’s story.

During the days of westward expansion, many of the original inhabitants of Allegany country were forced away from the Genesee Valley and forced onto reservation. That is, all but Copperhead, who claimed that he was never paid for his land and thus refused to leave. Over the years, Copperhead became a local icon. He lived off of charity and would often share his lunch with the local children who visited him. In March of 1864 tragedy struck, as his cabin caught on fire and badly burned him, leading to his death. Claiming to be 120 years old when he died, he was buried at the intersection of Centerville and Old River Road, facing eastward so that he could see the sunrise each day. 

The narrative was not over, however. In 1910 the Houghton Star published an article revealing that the nearby creek to Copperhead’s grave was beginning to destroy the burial site. The students on campus immediately began to raise money so that in June of 1914 Copperhead’s remains were safely transported to the top of the campus. Then, in order to give Copperhead a proper memorial, Leonard Houghton (son of Willard J. Houghton) donated the historic boulder that now rests there to this very day. 

Eventually, in 1925, the student body held a contest to see what the yearbook should be called. On the suggestion of a student known as Kieth Farner (‘25), The Boulder was chosen. 

The Copperhead Bolder is still used to this day on the campus’s insignia. You can see it on the front desk in the Reinhold Campus Center and on many of the stickers placed on the glass doors around campus.

A special thank you to Professor Douglas Gaerte for helping to make the research for this article possible!

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Humans of Houghton: Elijah Tangenberg

Elijah Tangenberg is a senior at Houghton, majoring in political science with a minor in economics. After Houghton, Elijah says that he hopes to do work related to water supply and national security. He explains that some of the goal with this is to “try to help us live more sustainably, while also preserving most of our current uses for water.” Elijah tells me that he first started thinking about water when he was growing up in California. “I think that my dad unintentionally started a water management mafia,” he jokes, “it’s a thing that he got really into when we moved to California. He got a job with the Council for Watershed Health in Los Angeles. I spent most of my childhood talking with my dad about water issues—things he was looking at at work, really frustrating things that were happening with policy at work, really cool things that had happened and how they worked.” Even though water was something Elijah thought and talked about a lot growing up, he says he didn’t initially think of focusing on water as an area of study in college. “I was actually much more interested in international relations,” he says, “but I took a class with Doctor Ronald Oakerson my second semester of sophomore year, and when we started talking about water issues I suddenly started getting really interested.”

Elijah tells me that some of the unique challenges of water particularly appealed to him—such as public perception about feasible water supply solutions, balancing the expense of different methods, and how water behaves differently from other natural resources. “It does things that no other natural resource we use does,” he says. “Like for fuel, gas, whatever, you burn it and it’s gone, it’s some other form, it’s in our atmosphere, but we’ll never see it become oil or wood again. We can kind of guess how those processes work, and try to encourage them, but it doesn’t happen nearly instantly. For water, it just falls from the sky, goes through a river, goes through the ocean, and can be back above our heads the next day. It’s really flexible.”

         In his spare time Elijah likes to work on his hobbies. He tells me about the three hobbies that he’s spent the most time on: journal systems, music, and reading ancient Japanese and Chinese poetry. Elijah explains that he got into haiku because of his cousin, and from haiku he made his way to ancient Chinese poetry. “Ancient Chinese culture is something that I’ve always been a little bit interested in,” he says. “Partly because of their culture’s relationship to government, but also natural spaces at the same time.” Elijah explains that the way the ancient Chinese related to their natural resources and to their government is often expressed in their poetry. “What the poems convey is this kind of embattlement between natural elements—this transcendence of nature, these divine forces—in connection to their relationship to government, their families, as well as their relationship to their selves. And all of those elements together have just really spoken to me as I’ve gone through political science, since frankly no other culture has poems about government—just even saying that makes people laugh.” However, Elijah says he thinks that connecting political science to art is really important. “Without the artistic element you lose a lot of creativity,” he says, “especially with natural resource policy, where you need to be balancing so many different needs at the same time, that really require really creative solutions—not just so that you can get to a really great outcome, but so that you can get to a survivable outcome. You need to have this respect for your subject that can only really be conveyed in art.”

         When I ask Elijah if he has any advice for readers, he says that a practice he’s come to appreciate a lot recently is spending time with things that are difficult. “So,” Elijah explains, “if there’s a subject that’s really difficult for you, kind of daring yourself to spend time with it, and to really get to know it. For an English student that might just be a paragraph in an essay they’re writing that they absolutely hate. For a math student, that could be spending your time with an equation or a theorem that you do not understand. I think our instinct a lot of the time is just to get it done and get it out of the way as best we can. But I really find that reflecting on an object or reflecting on a place, an event, or a lesson, can be really enriching.” Elijah explains that the goal of the time spent with the difficult thing is not to accomplish something particular with it, but just to experience it. “Find an object, idea, lesson, something you hate,” he says, “and for about ten or fifteen minutes, just sit with it, don’t try to do anything with it, but just allow it to speak to you.”

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A Mountain of Work, A Molehill of Time

Are you the kind of student with an eight page paper, forty pages of reading, and two sets of calculus problems due by Monday? Let’s not forget about that exam in your Intro to Psychology class on Tuesday, that you haven’t even thought about studying for. On top of all of that schoolwork, you got invited by a few of your friends to go to Letchworth this weekend and that cute student you met at freshmen orientation weekend is going to be there; you can’t miss out on that opportunity! There’s also church on Sunday and choir rehearsal Saturday night. It looks like quite the busy weekend and you only have so much time. How do you plan to juggle all of this?

College is stressful. It is hard to juggle our academic lives, work, our social lives, and our spiritual lives. Depression and anxiety have been on the rise on campuses across the nation since 2009, according to a study recently performed by  Cindy Liu, PhD, a psychologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and her colleagues. Schoolwork can seem endless, but you don’t want to spend your entire weekend stuck in your dorm room pulling your hair out over some calculus problems. How do you manage your time and alleviate some of this stress?

One of the biggest problems that many students face is that they don’t accurately give themselves enough time to perform a task. In social psychology this is referred to as the “planning fallacy”. This is the tendency to optimistically give yourself too little time to complete a task, not realizing your own role in your failure to complete it. How many times have you told yourself that it would only take two hours to complete an assignment and then that assignment took 3 hours to finish?

Instead of realizing that we didn’t give ourselves enough time, we blame it on the distractions that we didn’t account for, or that we’re tired or hungry. Sometimes this inability to complete an assignment on time can make us angry, we blame the professor. “He is expecting too much from his students!” We extrinsically evaluate the situation, rather than putting the blame where it really belongs: on ourselves. How do we remedy this situation?

An article by Heidi Halvorson outlined a few ways to prevent the planning fallacy. The first is to be aware of our own role in how long it takes for us to complete a task. This awareness allows us to consciously plan extra time. Secondly, it helps to remember how long it took to complete tasks similar to the one at hand. We should also plan for distractions, and in doing so take steps to help prevent those. You will probably face more distractions if you are doing work where you are closer to the general public, than if you were working in a study room. Lastly, we should take into account what could go wrong while we are working. While this can often be difficult to assess, even giving yourself a small amount of extra time can be extremely helpful.

Stress is common for everyone, and there are many ways to remedy it. Sometimes it just takes a different perspective to properly act on our stress. By taking these steps, we can prevent some of the stress associated with college, more accurately balance our time between school and friends, and feel better about ourselves and our ability to complete our work.

 

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Religious Diversity in Houghton

“Catholics on Campus”, along with St. Patrick’s Campus Ministry, sponsored Coffee & Catholicism in Java. A number of Houghton students gathered, coffee cups in hand, to listen to Houghton College Registrar Keven Kettinger and Deacon Paul Ward of the Dioceses of Steubenville discuss Catholicism. It was an insightful evening as Deacon Paul Ward answered a number of both Kettingers and students questions, such as,
what are the Catholics Church’s teachings regarding faith and works? Why is Mary, Mother of
Jesus, so significant in Catholicism? Deacon Paul Ward also answered questions surrounding
the Eucharist and the tradition it holds within the church, as well as the importance of tradition
itself within Catholicism.

Attending this event I myself had a number of questions answered that have been swimming
around in my head since studying abroad last semester with the Houghton in Tanzania
program. In this program I learned and experienced countless amazing things, diversity in
religion was one of them. Every Sunday we would go to a different Christian Church, sometimes
hiking 45 minutes to a rural church with twenty members, where the majority of the service was
singing and dancing, and others driving to the city of Iringa to attend Mshindo Catholic Church.
There was a wealth of religious diversity in Tanzania, from various Christian denominations, to
Indigenous Religions, to Middle Eastern Religions such as Islam. That semester was my real
first exposure to the diversity within Christian denominations and religion, it was a fascinating
experience that left me wanting to learn more.

Here at Houghton College, though we are affiliated with the Wesleyan Church, there is a
diversity of denomination and religion among the students, and I hope to give those students a
platform to speak with the Religious Diversity in Houghton column. This includes every
denomination of within Christianity, as well as non denominational, and every Religion, or lack
thereof, within Houghton College.

The Religious Diversity in Houghton column hopes to explore this wealth of diversity on
campus and give students a chance to express their beliefs.This column isn’t meant to change
anyone’s faith or be an argument over who got it right, but to get a conversation started, and
give students a chance to share their faith, their beliefs and their passions regarding religion.

In chapel last Wednesday Dean Jordan challenged us to work hard, not just with our hands, but
with our minds as well. Expressing what you believe or even listening to a belief different then
your own can be hard work, but it could add both to individual knowledge and the knowledge of
the campus.

Throughout the semester there will be a series of articles that will present a different student
and their religious views on Houghton Campus. If anyone is interested, has any questions or is
would like to be featured please contact the Houghton Star.